The present invention relates to telephone answering machines and more particularly to a multiple message answering machine capable of providing a preselected one of a number of responses to an incoming telephone call depending on the number of the telephone from which the call originated.
Although telephone answering machines have quickly come to be indispensable to their users, they have been received somewhat less enthusiastically by callers, who most often perceive the recorded message to be generic, dull, and unengaging. This problem is compounded by recent concerns of safety and privacy that have caused some users to delete even mention of their name from the answering message, reciting instead only the telephone number reached Far less would the prudent user be inclined to include a genuinely sensitive piece of information in the answering message, for instance that he or she would be on vacation for an extended period or that the door key could be found under the mat, knowing that the message would be relayed to every chance caller without differentiation. The problem that messages appropriate for strangers and the general public may not be appropriate for specific callers, and the inability to leave a particular message for a particular individual or individuals, have been tolerated for want of any workable alternative, there not having been any way to ascertain the identity of or otherwise differentiate between callers.
Arrangements are known wherein one of multiple messages is triggered by a sequence of code keys pressed by the caller. Such arrangements are burdensome, however, in their requirement that the caller memorize codes, and would become particularly burdensome if such an arrangement were to find widespread use. On the other hand, simple codes -like the last four digits of the caller's phone number- would permit individuals to easily obtain messages intended for others. Furthermore, such an arrangement tends to be fairly static, since a caller must either receive the message designated by his or her assigned code or have a change of code communicated to him or her by the user.
Telephone companies have now begun to offer a service whereby for a monthly fee subscribers can have the phone number of the incoming call electronically transmitted to their telephone. Devices are currently available that will display the incoming phone numbers as exemplified in U.S. Pat. No. 4,242,539.